On His Own, for reggie11, part 2 of 2
#
Sam woke with a start, jerking his head up from where it had rested on his chest-library, Dean, van, danger flowed quickly through his mind on a flood of adrenaline.
His head cracked sharply against something solid (the back of the straight backed chair he’d been tied to, he realized later) and pain flared, sun-burst bright, through his head; pain like someone had reached into his brain and twisted, crossed neurons; pain like when spark and gasoline and oxygen met, exploded.
When the world existed outside his head again-with the door in front of him, the light behind him, and yellow curtains over the window-there was vomit in his lap, wet and slimy and disgusting, and faintly orange, and he was naked. Sam gagged again, retching as panic and the smell flipped his stomach, as pain throbbed through his head. His hands closed convulsively on the smooth arms of the chair, flexing against the ropes that bound them.
“Chloroform takes people that way sometimes,” the guy sitting in front of him said. He had a long, broad face with a high forehead, shaggy blond hair, thin lips, and warm, chocolate brown eyes. Sam’s gaze skittered away from them like they’d burned him. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
There was an open entryway to his left, wide and dark; the scuffed wooden floors were dusty and unpolished; the curtains were frilly and faded. Sam had seen enough abandoned domiciles to know this one played to type.
“Let me go,” he demanded helplessly, as incapable of stopping the words in that moment as he was of not pulling at the ropes binding his arms.
The guy’s thin lips twitched in amusement. “No.” He would be tall when he stood up.
“My dad’s going to kill you.”
“First,” the guy said, something about his voice, or possibly his expression, familiar, tugging at the back of his mind, “he has to find me.” The expectantly arched eyebrows seemed to Sam to say, And we both know he’s not here to start looking.
Sam swallowed hard, then tipped his head back to meet the guy’s eyes steadily, defiantly, because Dean was; Dean was looking. Never show them your fear, Dean had told him. He’d been talking about bullies, after an older kid had pushed little Sammy down on the playground and skinned his knee, but he figured the advice still counted. Maybe counted more, because it’d been a long time since he’d really been scared of the jerks at school. “What do you want?”
That got him a pleased smile, like he’d finally asked the right question, and the guy sat forward, arms crossed over the back of the folding metal chair he straddled. “You’re a bright kid, aren’t you, Sam?”
How do you know my name? “I guess.”
“Brightest kid in your class, in fact. Isn’t that right?”
“I’m the oldest,” Sam answered slowly, wary of the question and still trying to figure out what about the man, about his leading questions, was so familiar. He wasn’t a teacher. Sam knew all his teachers. “It’d be kinda sad if I wasn’t.”
“Doesn’t it make you mad,” the guy pressed, “being a whole year behind when you should be a year ahead? When you should be in honors. Doesn’t that just make you so mad?”
“Why do you care?” Sam demanded, instead of saying yeah, latent anger and frustration at not being able to do anything about it mixing with the fear, turning the question hostile. “You don’t know me.”
Except, all of a sudden, Sam realized he did. Jesup Stiles had substituted for his English class two weeks into the term, and instead of letting them do the assigned reading, like Mrs. Collins had instructed, he’d drawn them into a philosophical debate. Sam, fresh off a fight with his father, had obstinately opted to do the reading and been called on his lack of participation.
“Why do you care?” he’d demanded, with enough petulant vitriol Dean would have smacked him if he'd been there. “You’re going to be gone tomorrow and none of this will matter.”
In that silence that had followed, Sam had felt small and miserable and ashamed.
Now, Sam felt sucker-punched.
Stiles’ smile was small, mean. “You make a lot of assumptions, don’t you, Sam,” he mused. “Because you’re thirteen and you’ve seen the world and you know everything. Don’t you?”
Sam clenched his jaw, and tried not to hear Dean saying the same words, weeks ago, when they’d been fighting about Dad again, about who was right. Somehow this man saying them made Dean saying them hurt more.
“Do you know what happens when you assume, Sam?” Stiles prodded. “You’re a bright kid, Sam, so you must’ve heard this before. Do you know what happens when you assume?”
He drew a breath over Dad’s voice in his head, the angry-You never assume, Sam. Never. You do the research and know or you get somebody killed. “Why are you doing this?”
Stiles leaned in close. “You make an ass out of you and me, Sam,” he said, eyes hard. Then he settled back, easy, breezy, beautiful--.
“Because I do know you, Sam. I know your mommy died when you were just a baby, and I know that your dad’s been dragging you across the country ever since. I know your dad leaves you alone a lot, that all you really have is your brother. And he’s growing up, Sam. Soon he’s going to be old enough to leave you and your dad. What do you think he’s going to do then?”
Sam’s breath hitched on the thought. Even knowing, as sure as he knew his own name, that Dean would never leave while he needed him, the idea still stirred terror deep in his gut. He twisted his hand restlessly against the rope. “Get a day job?” He tossed his head, trying to get his hair out of his eyes.
Suddenly, Stiles was close enough that Sam could feel his breath on his face, smell the stench of stale food. His legs brushed Sam’s knees, the fabric of his jeans rough against Sam’s bare skin. His eyes were hard and angry and glittered with a madness he’d only ever seen in ghosts. “You think this is funny?” he demanded.
Sam wished desperately that he could put some distance between them, but the chair was unyielding. “N-no.”
Stiles straightened, but he didn’t move away, said “Derek’s a good friend, isn’t he, Sam?” as mildly as if he'd never had an outburst. The return of Reasonable Stiles did nothing to quell Sam’s desire for distance. “Do you have a lot in common?”
“I gu-” Stiles’ face hardened imperceptively. Sam swallowed the rest. “S-soccer.”
The hardness eased. “You like soccer. Don’t you, Sam?”
Sam nodded.
“Even with Coach Scott?”
What the hell? Sam startled, remembering his impression that the killer had latched onto Duane Scott somehow and hesitated. He could already hear Dean saying, No, no, no, Sam, shut up. You humor the crazy man, you hear me?, but this could be important. He just wasn't sure how to play it. Slowly, he nodded again.
Stiles’ eyes narrowed. Sam automatically braced for an explosion. But it didn't come. “Are you sure? I know you don’t like Coach Scott.”
Humor the crazy man, Sam.
“I-” Stiles leaned forward, anticipatory, and Sam made his decision. He crinkled his forehead in exaggerated confusion. “What does Coach Scott have to do with it?”
Something dark momentarily twisted the crazy man’s face. “What does-? He has everything to do with it, Sam,” Stiles declared. “The people you’re closest to, the ones you spend the most time with, are always going to color your perception of a task.”
Sam thought of hunting, of Dad and Dean, felt his stomach drop and didn't know why. “Oh.”
“Oh,” Stiles echoed. Then he leaned back and studied Sam’s face, smiled conspiratorily. “Coach Scott likes you, you know. I could see it the first time he laid eyes on you. So sweet and quiet, hesitant with your peers, all confidence and strength on the field.” His eyes traced Sam’s body, lingering a moment at his groin. “Such potential.”
None of the reports had indicated the victims were sexually assaulted-except, you know, for the genital mutilation bit, which he wasn’t thinking about, ever-but Sam wondered, now, his skin crawling, if that wasn’t for lack of trying.
Then Stiles stared hard into his eyes. “He doesn’t understand yet.”
Sam had to lick his lips to ask, “Understand what?”
But Stiles didn’t answer, just pulled a smile onto his face. “Did you know the chair came with the house?” The tone was a return to Teacher-Stiles, but the eyes were hard. “The Pruetts lived here before Mr. Pruett died and Mrs. Pruett moved in with her dear friend, Beth Ann. I think she meant to leave the place exactly as it’d been when he’d been alive, but-” He shrugged and tipped his head toward the darkened entryway that doubtless led to the rest of the house. “I found it over there, in what was once the dining room. The last of its kind.” This time, when Stiles studied him, Sam’s skin prickled for an entirely different reason.
“I don’t think it’s going to work, though.”
Following him by ear, Sam struggled to keep his breathing under control, even as he pulled at the restraints hard enough it felt like his hands were going to come off. Because he knew what the end-game here was, and he remembered what those other boys had looked like after Stiles was done. And he knew what that look meant, had seen it too many times on too many different faces not to recognize it now, directed at him.
Of all the ways he thought he or his brother or father might die, after Dean told him the monsters in Dad’s journal were real, this had never made the list.
“Luckily-” Stiles returned to crouch beside him with a black box-thing clutched in his hand, which he held up for Sam’s perusal. “I came prepared.”
Taser, Sam had time to register, and then the prongs were buried in his side, pressed between two ribs, and electricity sang through him.
#
It hurt. He could feel his muscles seize and tremble, could feel his head tap-tap-tapping against the chair, could smell the burning and ozone, and hear the snap-crackle of the electricity, but he couldn’t move. With the hand wrapped tight around his heart, he’d have been afraid to.
Sam had been tased before, recognized the feeling, knew it would end and take the pain with it and it’d be like it had never happened.
It didn't help much.
He watched helplessly as Stiles removed the taser, then the bindings on his arms and legs. He couldn’t do anything, except moan and drool, when Stiles pulled him up to feet that wouldn’t support him, and tipped him over his shoulder. Then he hung there, struggling to remember how to breathe, as Stiles picked up a bag, clomped over to the door, and carried him out into the yard.
Darkness stretched around them uninterrupted. He couldn’t hear any cars passing on the street, or smell their exhaust, or see their lights peeking through the shadows. But the grass rustled with every step. And he could smell it, the grass and dirt, and maybe hay.
Farm, he decided, and wondered how far Stiles had taken him. There were some farms starting approximately eight miles from their apartment, Sam knew, but would he risk keeping Sam so close?
Cool air prickled over his back and sides, moving unimpeded over skin that usually had a buffer. It left Sam uncomfortably aware that his ass was on display. The impulse to move, to cover himself, to at least stand up so he wasn’t-so very thoroughly-flashing anything that happened to look crawled relentlessly under his skin. Sam’s toes flexed with it. He curled his hands against it, deliberately, over and over, until the staticky interference that made it feel like he was moving through sand dissipated.
Maybe Stiles noticed, or maybe he’d just reached the end of some timer in his head, because he shifted the bag onto his shoulder, then held Sam in place with that hand and moved his other hand from across his knees to press the taser just under his buttock.
Sam twitched, hands clenched in the only defense he could manage, then forced his body to stillness.
“Do you have any experience with bullies, Sam?” Stiles asked, apropos of nothing. Sam clenched his jaw and didn’t answer, certain the man didn’t count himself in that number, just as certain that he didn't count Stiles in any other. “At your age, it’s mostly name-calling, shoves, rumors. The odd punch or kick when you’re helpless. They haven’t learned sophistication yet.”
“Sophistication?”
The prongs dug harder into his backside. Sam knew it was just his imagination, that if Stiles had depressed the trigger it would have been another five seconds of agony instead of the momentary jolt he felt, but his heart still jumped, his body still tensed. He swallowed hard.
Stiles laughed, low and dark. “And when you think it can’t get any worse? There’s always the pictures.”
Pictures? Sam’s stomach ached, abused by every jolting step. Had Stiles taken pictures before Sam woke up? Or was he waiting until they reached their destination?
Sam pushed the thought away. He knew he had another date with the taser when this journey ended, no matter what; no way would Stiles risk a fight at the end, when every other transition had been made with Sam incapacitated.
But how would he do it? If he tased Sam as they were, the shock would transfer to him, too. If he’d done this before, he had to know that. If he planned to dump Sam and then shock him, Sam might have a few precious seconds to retaliate, get the upper hand.
Unless Stiles hadn’t encountered this scenario before. If he’d taken the other boys straight from the van to the final destination, while they were still under from the chloroform, he might not know the current would transfer. The unexpectedness of it might be enough to let Sam recover first. Sam could take him out, then get in the van and get back to civilization. Find Dean.
He didn’t dare wait for Dean to find him, not without knowing how long it would be. Because one thing he knew for sure: once Stiles got him tied back up, the only way he was getting out was if Dean found him, or in a body bag.
He had to move. Patience, Sammy. Pick your moment. Dad.
Sam’s throat clicked dryly when he swallowed. “Please,” he said. “You don’t have to do this.”
Stiles didn’t respond, except to slowly squeeze Sam’s knee tighter and tighter. It was just starting to really hurt, to the point where Sam had to shift, had to try to free his leg, when Stiles stumbled.
The jolt slid Sam into Stiles’ neck, and he grabbed instinctively at the back of the guy’s shirt as he tilted. Peripherally, he heard the bag slip and hit the ground. Stiles’ hands moved, trying to recover his balance. Sam realize he couldn't feel the taser.
Pick your moment.
Sam hadn’t kicked anyone in the groin since he was four (no matter Dean’s advice), but he did now, pulling back his toes to connect with the ball of his foot and putting as much force as he could into it while barefoot, with maybe a foot and half of clearance, pushed up on his arms to abandon ship when it went down.
Because Stiles did go down. He seized up tight, almost like Sam had triggered the taser, his grunt breathless. He hit the ground partially on his side. Sam hit the ground hard and stumbled back, losing his footing on the uneven ground, the tall grass brushing across his back, but he didn’t dare look away from Stiles, not when he couldn’t see the man’s hands, not when he couldn’t find the taser.
He wanted Dean.
Instead, he focused on the pale oval of Stiles’ face, still at ground level, still pulled into a grimace--the only part he could clearly make out in the pale moonlight--and used a kick he’d learned in soccer rather than from his father. He felt the cartilage give way, heard the crunch.
Saw and felt and heard Stiles go limp.
The low rumble of a car’s engine brought his head up. He couldn’t see any lights from the road-wasn’t entirely sure where the road was, in the darkness-but he heard the car slow and dropped into a crouch by Stiles’ body. He didn’t have Dean’s encyclopedic knowledge of cars, couldn’t tell what kind of car it was, but he knew it wasn’t the Impala. Wasn't Dad.
The taser wasn’t in either of Stiles’ hands, or on the ground around him, and Sam couldn’t find it in the grass. His gaze snagged on a darker, larger shadow a few feet away that had to be Stiles’ bag, and skittered over to it while the car crunched along the gravel drive.
Yanking it open, he found rope, thicker than the stuff Stiles had used on him at the house; a flashlight, heavy enough to be used as a weapon; a telescoping baton, which some distant part of his brain noted as the probable source of the bruising on the victims; a pack of cigarettes, unopened, and a lighter; a camera; a knife, six inches long with a thick, tapered blade, and a textured handle. His fingers slid along the sheath before wrapping around it and pulling it from the bag.
Whoever stepped out of that car, he wouldn't face them unarmed.
The silver blade glinted even in the low light when he slid it free. For a moment, he imagined giving Stiles the same thin slices he’d planned for Sam.
Then the grind of gravel under rubber tires ceased, the car eased to a stop just behind the panel van-which, Sam noticed, put it out of view of the house and too far away for the lamp that lit the living room window to illuminate it.
That didn’t do anything to block Sam’s view of the car, or of the dark-clad figure that slipped out of it, pale face illuminated by the moon but not by any interior lights.
Sam couldn’t make out the figure’s features, not in the dim light and from more than a block away, but he didn’t need to. He’d recognize that stance, that gait, anywhere. He’d been following it his whole life.
“Dean!” He pushed the beloved name out of a suddenly tight throat, managing less than half of the volume he’d intended. No way his brother could have heard him. But Dean stopped.
At the bottom of the porch stairs, Dean’s head abruptly came up and swiveled sharply toward him. “Sam?”
“Dean!” He tried to push up, he really did, to close some of the distance between him and his brother, put more distance between him and Stiles, but he’d started shaking at some point and his legs wouldn’t hold him. He sank back onto his haunches with the prickles of stupid, useless tears clawing at his throat and wrapped his arms around his legs.
Dean had seen him, at least, was headed straight for him, head swiveling to try to catch the threat to him, to them, in the dark. Sam couldn’t find the words to tell him the threat was unconscious, didn’t quite believe it, besides.
“Sam! You good?”
He was achy and cold, his stomach in knots, his head throbbing, his left eye definitely swelling, and he was naked in a field with his brother running to the rescue. Good wasn’t the word for it. But that was all stuff for later, for after, and not what his brother was asking, anyway, not really.
Trust Dean to find the words. A smile pulled painfully at his lips. “I’m good.”
Dean would make sure he stayed that way.
#
He bundled Sam into the Civic. The kid was back in his clothes, liberated from the perv’s van, but his skin still felt like ice and his jaw was locked against the shuddery tremors that hadn’t stopped since Dean had found him. Reaction as much as cold, Dean figured, and if it wouldn’t have meant leaving Sam alone in the dark (again), he’d’ve gone back and pulled the perv’s spine out through his nose. Instead, he slid into the driver’s seat and cranked the heat.
He hadn’t gotten a good look, between the dim light and getting the kid wrapped in Dean’s overshirt, but he was pretty sure the physical damage was minimal, was no worse than they’d come home with from a simple schoolyard brawl. Even if those were usually Dean's domain.
Dean wished he thought that would make this easier.
Sam stared blankly out the window through Dean backing up and pulling around, crunching over the washed-out gravel drive. There was a time, not that long ago, when Sam would have been pressed against his, hands balled in his shirt, face buried behind his shoulder. He glanced at the kid repeatedly, trying to read his expression, checking if he was awake, making sure he was still breathing.
It was only when Dean left gravel for the blacktop that he Sam stirred. “Dean,” he murmured, all emo-eyes and floppy hair and annoying conscious, the do-gooder. “We can’t just leave him there.”
Him being Stiles, the brother-stealing murderous pervert, and there being the back of his own van on an abandoned farm where he’d intended to leave Sam dead, Dean tended to disagree with his brother, just on principle. But they’d also left the fucker with his knife, a lighter, and some pretty flammable evidence, precisely because the plan wasn’t to just leave him there, so he started looking for a good vantage point to watch the show from. He just wished he’d brought binoculars. “We’re not.”
He found a nice copse of trees and brush to hide the car behind, one that would shelter them from view of the road and any helpful people who would soon be poking around the abandoned farm, then parked. The anonymous call to the cops took less than a minute. Then it was just a waiting game. The cops, predictably, would take a lot longer to get there.
Sam, who had been watching him since they parked, went back to staring out the window as soon as Dean looked at him. Which left Dean staring at the bruise on his little brother’s cheek, the one that had swelled his left eye mostly shut and was visible even in the dark.
Taking a deep breath, Dean wrapped his hands around the steering wheel, the better to keep his hands from tearing open the door so he could go lay into Stiles and leave him at least a fraction as bloody as he’d intended to leave Sam. Because the last thing Sam needed, tonight, was to watch his brother get arrested, never mind end up in foster care because his entire family were idiots. No, the cops would take care of Stiles. They would just watch and make sure the jerk-off didn’t get away in the meantime.
“Dean?” Sam asked, finally breaking the silence that had felt like it was smothering Dean.
“What?” he said.
Sam shifted, wrapped his arms more tightly around himself, eyes huge. “What if they don’t arrest him?”
“They will.” They had the chair with the ropes, the black bag of goodies, the incriminating photos (Dean had found them under the front seat), the van in Stiles’ name, the chloroform. But even if all that somehow wasn’t enough, Dean had left them a helpful note:
I’ve murdered eight people. Please arrest me. Even if they didn't take his word for it, it'd be enough to make them look.
“But what if they don’t?” Sam repeated. What if he comes after me again?
Dean twisted around so he could face Sam head-on. “Then I’ll put him in the hospital.” He’s not touching you again.
For a long moment, Sam just stared, his eyes dark and shiny, his breath a too fast, too shallow rasp, and Dean wasn’t sure if his brother hadn’t heard him or-worse-didn’t believe him. But then Sam quirked a smile, there and gone, and relaxed against the seat. For a value of "relaxed," because the twerp was still shivering.
“If you do,” he said, “I’m not covering for you with Dad.”
Dean huffed, felt his own shoulders relax, just a fraction. The kid would be all right. He'd make sure of it. “Bitch.”
They stayed until the cops loaded Stiles into the back of a police car.
#
“There’s something I need to do before we leave,” Sam announced the next morning.
The paper had featured the headline: Suspect Found Trussed in Van. Dad had lived up to expectation, calling not only after the crisis had passed but also to announce they would be leaving after lunch. And Sam, after only really falling asleep once Dean had pushed him over to lay at his back, had remembered the question of Duane Scott had never been resolved.
Dean eyed him warily, no doubt noting the jeans, the hoodie, the backpack. They’d already fought about school, and Sam wasn’t looking to reopen it, but Dean didn’t know that. His shoulders tensed in preparation for round two. “What?”
Sam smiled, knew it came out a little self-deprecating, a little self-conscious. “I can’t tell you.”
Dean’s eyebrows went up, then came down. “You’re not going.”
“This isn’t about school,” he assured his brother, closing some of the distance between them but not sitting down. Dean was, though; he could use the height advantage. “It’s just something I need to do.”
“That you can’t tell me about.”
“Not yet.” Sam waited. He stared earnestly at Dean and let his brother find whatever he would, because he knew Dean, and he knew Dean knew how much he didn’t want to leave again, and he knew Dean wanted him to be happy, and he knew that if he didn’t back down, Dean would eventually work around to giving him what he wanted. To make him happy.
A minute later, Dean’s shoulders dropped, and Sam knew he’d won even before Dean said, “All right.” He grinned.
Dean pointed a finger at him. “But I’m coming with you.”
“All right.” He wasn’t going to tell him he’d been counting on it. Needing his big brother to sleep, and his big brother knowing it, had been humiliating enough.
#
The house was relatively small, blue-gray with darker blue trim, had five windows and a small front yard. Dean picked the lock while Sam kept watch and ignored the looks his big brother sent him.
He wouldn’t be able to avoid them much longer. He knew his brother recognized the house. Dean had been the one to drive him to the barbeque at the beginning of the year, after all, and his brother had an excellent memory (especially for roads and buildings and could find his way back to anywhere he'd been once), whether he admitted it or not. And he knew Dean wasn’t going to just sit and wait while Sam searched.
Sam didn’t want him to, really, more than a little weirded out by the fact that this was his hunt, that he was choosing to break into another person’s house to root around their possessions without their knowledge or permission. Usually, it was Dad forcing him to be there, and Sam dragging his feet because, what they did, it was wrong.
Not the killing monsters part, because they deserved it, but the rest. The stuff they had to lie and run and hide to do.
But this was Sam’s hunt this time, and if he found what he was looking for, it would ruin a man’s life.
Sam grimaced and trailed his brother inside. The foyer was dark, and opened to an even darker combination office/living room on the right, hallway on the left. Sam gravitated to the hallway, peeking down it around the wall. There were a lot of things that lived in the dark.
“You ready to tell me what we’re looking for here, Sammy?”
Sam jumped. He hadn’t heard Dean come back-hadn’t really registered him moving to the end of the foyer, either.
Dean watched him with dark eyes, weight balanced forward, ready to move, even though there were no supernaturals here, no threats. “Sammy?” Worried and suspicious, and anything that came at them now wouldn’t know what hit it.
Sam just wished he knew he was right. He grimaced again, but he'd have to tell Dean eventually. “Pictures.”
“What kind of pictures?”
Hesitating, Sam slowly reached out, flipped the light switch. Found a neat row of framed, mounted, Carver Middle School team soccer photos. Family photos, Sam couldn’t help but think, and felt sick.
Dean ghosted up next to him, took in the photos impassively. “Sammy?”
Sam didn’t know what to tell him. He tilted his head down the hallway. “I’ll take back here?”
“Yell if you need help,” Dean answered, finally. He gave Sam a long look before heading off, hesitating before he disappeared around the corner.
There were four photos. None of frames held extra photos or hid any safes, any strange seams. The floor, based on the feel and sound when he moved, was poured concrete under the carpet.
There were more photos in the master bedroom. Some were mounted on the wall, some were in frames set up on the nightstand or dresser or bookshelf; all of them were pictures from their soccer games: Carter kicking a goal; Jonathan crouched to scoop up a grounder before the goal; Derek in mid-pass, left hand raised to call the play; Bill jousting for the ball against someone from their division rival; dozens others, from years and teams Sam had never met.
It was harder to push them aside, ignore them, than Sam had expected-would have expected, if it had ever occurred to him to expect this.
His skin crawled as he pulled open the dresser drawers, one after the other, tossing the contents carefully, checking the bottom, feeling for any envelopes taped underneath. He very deliberately didn’t look around before moving to the nightstand, or before checking under the bed, between the mattresses. The scrapbook he pulled off of the bookshelf didn’t hold any photos, just a lot of newspaper clippings following the Carver Cougars, and a thank-you card.
I made the travel team. I couldn’t have done it without you, Coach. Anthony.
Looking at Anthony’s picture, he thought he knew why Coach Scott might have been drawn to Sam.
“Hey, Sammy! Come check this out!”
#
He found Dean in the office/living room, seated in the office chair and poking darkly through the office safe. His brother looked up as soon as Sam crossed the threshold.
“Found something,” he announced, pulling a stack of 8x10s with him when he turned to face Sam, his expression closed down, but his motions tight, angry.
Sam didn’t need to look at the pictures to know what he’d see, but he did anyway. His stomach swooped. “Do you think there are any more?”
“Probably.”
Sam nodded. Anthony smiled up at him, shirtless, shorts hooked low on his hips. He pushed the photos back at Dean. “We need to go. Dad’ll be back soon.”
“Sammy-”
“We can call it in before we leave.” He was across the room before he realized it, breathing fast and still not getting enough oxygen.
“Sammy, stop.”
Sam did, but it was mostly because he didn’t know where he was going, anyway. Running wouldn’t fix this, but he wanted it to. Wanted to un-see it, to pretend the only monsters lived in the dark and had terrible shapes. He couldn’t make his feet move to face his brother.
He knew what Dean wanted to know.
“Did he-”
“No.”
“And he never-”
“No.”
He hadn’t. He hadn’t ever touched Sam anywhere Dean or Dad or a handful of other coaches or teachers hadn’t, certainly not anywhere that had made him uncomfortable. He hadn’t ever asked Sam to do anything, or take off anything, or pose for anything that raised any suspicions-not with Sam, or the rest of the team, or Coach Willis, or any of the parents.
Nothing bad had happened.
If it hadn’t been for a certain look, one Sam couldn’t quite put his finger on, even after weeks of trying, he might never have noticed anything untoward at all. And that, Sam decided, was what really bothered him. Not the touching, not the looks, not the unearned familiarity-but the fact that all of that could pass for normal. Had, for more than three years.
Suddenly, Dean stood in front of him, empty hands braced on Sam’s shoulders. “You’re okay, Sammy,” he said, and Sam nodded. He was. But how many others weren’t? “We’re gonna fix this, ok? Sammy? You hearing me?”
He nodded again, but Dean didn’t move, just pressed harder on his shoulders, grounding him. Sam had to swallow, to work some saliva back into his mouth, but he managed to say, “I hear you.”
“Ok,” Dean said. “That’s good.” But when he let go, it was to hook one arm around Sam’s shoulders and the other around his head, holding him close and letting Sam hide, all-Sam sputtered a laugh into his brother’s chest when he realized-with a modified headlock.
He tousled Sam’s hair when Sam finally felt steady enough to pull back. “You ready, twerp?”
“I’m ready.” He was.
#
Sam made the call, at a payphone on the way back to the apartment to meet Dad, Dean at his back, warm and solid and there. He just wished things-other things-could have ended differently. Because there was some things no one should have to face alone.